CLEVELAND, Ohio - Like a photo slowly coming into focus, the future of Public Square is taking shape, guided by 40 to 50 workers a day using excavators, front end loaders, bulldozers, fork trucks and an "RT" crane, short for "rough terrain."

An overlook view of Public Square on Monday, July 13 shows the curved outline of a bench and peripheral promenade taking shape at the northeast corner of the 6-acre civic space, plus the rectangular form of an underground service vault for a water feature, at the southwest corner of the square, closest to the photo's viewpoint.

As of Tuesday, about four-and-a-half months into construction of a dramatic, $32 million makeover, the fenced-off square looked mostly like a wilderness sculpted with dunes and valleys of the sandy, light-brown soil that lies under downtown Cleveland's office towers and government buildings.

The square was scattered with gigantic trench boxes used to keep workers safe while digging the trenches needed to build foundations and routes for below-grade structures on site.

Neat stacks of pipes were laid down in preparation for installation. And cylindrical drains in steel and concrete poked up out of the soil, awaiting the future landscaping that would eventually surround them.

But at the northeast corner of the square, on the outer edge of the future "Concert Hill," (to be named for donors Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel) a crane had lifted into position the graceful curve of a sleek, wide bench sculpted in gleaming, light-gray precast concrete.

The bench is the first area in which a finished portion of the renovated square has been installed in exactly the position it will occupy in the completed makeover. In that sense, it's the first snapshot of the square's future coming into focus.

Amid the controlled chaos of construction, the bench resembled an abstract sculpture - and looked like a harbinger of the kind of sunning, lounging, relaxing and enjoyment the revitalized square is intended to encourage.

Downtown workers with offices overlooking the square have been able to watch the progress from on high since work began March 9.

But on Tuesday, The Plain Dealer had an exclusive first look at ground level inside the construction fences that ring the 6-acre construction site in the heart of downtown.

Designed by the New York landscape architecture firm of James Corner Field Operations, co-designer of New York's celebrated High Line Park, the renovation is aimed at transforming the square by largely unifying what had been four traffic islands isolated by Ontario Street and Superior Avenue, and by four peripheral roads.

Corner's design removes Ontario Street, while allowing Superior Avenue to remain as a route for buses traversing the square from east to west and vice versa.

Last month, the nonprofit Group Plan Commission, the city-county body overseeing improvements to public spaces downtown, announced it had raised $31.4 million of the $32 million needed to construct the renovation of the square, plus nearly $2.4 million for programming and maintenance.

On Tuesday's tour, Jeremy Paris, executive director of the commission, said the project is still on time for completion in time for the 2016 Republican National Convention.

And Daniel Gess, senior project manager for Donley's, the lead contractor on the project, said crews from his firm and a half dozen subcontractors are taking advantage of longer days and good weather this month to stay on schedule.

Curiosity about the project has been intense, said Nora Romanoff, senior project director at the nonprofit LAND Studio, which is helping to manage the renovation. She said the organization has even had requests to allow marriages on the construction site.

"You'd be amazed," she said. "It's not that we're trying to prohibit things, we just want the work to get done."

Romanoff also said that diverting traffic around the square's perimeter has worked well so far, and has not tangled downtown streets.

"The 'Squaremageddon' everyone predicted never happened," she said.

Work to date has concentrated mainly on underground structures such as utility lines and the service vault at the southwest corner of the square that will serve a water feature and fountain that will occupy the south central portion of the public space.

The vault, which is set just northeast of the main entrance to the Terminal Tower, will also serve as the foundation of the square's new outdoor cafe, designed by nARCHITECTS of New York and Westlake Reed Leskosky of Cleveland.

Elsewhere in the square, much of the landscape is still either carved in trenches to prepare foundations or piled high with sandy brown soil that will be re-graded in the future.

But hints of the square's future were visible everywhere. On the north side of the space, for example, pieces of Ontario Street have been removed, providing an inkling of the future "event lawn" that will occupy the former path of the roadway.

"We're standing on what is no longer a street," Paris said.

Another striking effect of the work-in-progress is that it has in effect unified the long-divided square, pulling it together as the immense space it truly is.

In its previous state as a collection of four divided quadrants, which felt like traffic islands, the square always seemed to be less than the sum of its parts.

But during the visit Tuesday, the square somehow felt bigger than it has in the past.

The space, temporarily cleared of trees, signs, bus stops and other structures, also called attention to the way in which is it surrounded and shaped by nearby buildings, many of them historic, including the Terminal Tower, Old Stone Church, Key Tower and the Howard M. Metzenbaum U.S. Courthouse.

Gess said he's excited about seeing the emerging outlines of Corner's design for the square. He said it is adding excitement and a sense of momentum on the work site.

"We want to take advantage of the good light and the good weather," he said. "We'll be wishing for good weather in December, so we're pushing right now to take every advantage of it."